241 - Sketches/Movement/Storyboard Ready for Hand-In

After Illustrating and photoshoping I got my images ready to hand in

251 - 2nd Laser Session

So obviously I committed a lot of mistakes when laser cutting my thing and I had to develop the shape to one that would fit perfectly. With today's session I was able to almost finish it but I am still going to need another session. I've also started working with the concept of using screws and bolts to connect the main parts.

251 - Laser Cutting!

I decided that the container for my circuit would be nice looking, so I decided to do it through the laser cutters! I designed it on illustrator and started printing some pieces that I could put together.

This might be a little hard to see because the thickness of the lines have to be set to 0.001 mm

241 - Project 2a - Illustratin'

I started created the same images I drew by hand on Illustrator and adding colours so that it looked much prettier.

251 - Broken Tuner...

So I was trying to add buttons to my guitar tuner but the circuit it has is so sensitive that it burnt and broke. I had to buy a new tuner that was hopefully the exact same or something really similar in relation to sound. I bought the exact same tuner from Rockshop and fortunately they had slower the price by half and I was lucky they still had a couple because they were actually trying to get rid of them. The good part is that since I had to do the same things to its circuit I did it better, clearer and stronger.

241 - Project 2a - Storyboard Sketches

So I started sketching my storyboard to have a more concrete idea of the story as a whole.

Then I made separate drawings to redraw them in Illustrator later on and make a better storyboard

251 - Polish up.

I took the day to polish up my circuit. I had really long cables and weak solders, so I did my best to get rid of whatever seemed unnecessary. This is how much cable I was able to get out of my circuit.

251 - Kit

By having so much stuff I'm dealing with (electronics) I kind of built my own little kit, I just wanted to show you. It is really helpful because this way things (cables and such) are not jumping around in my bag, everything is just compacted into that container.

241 - Project 2a - Final Character Form

This is my final sketch for my character for. I'm pretty happy with it :) I wanted it to look as simple as possible but still conveying my object ideas.

251 - Another Speaker.

So by using just one speaker the sound only comes out as the B side, I would very much like to have both A and B sounds (both sides of speakers). So I grabbed another speaker from the set, which was a good idea considering it has an amplifier and I left out the bass. I also changed its plug to a battery based one since we're not aloud to use DC.

241 - Project 2a - Environment Sketches

So I have started sketching the environment and thinking deeper into the context of the story. I decided I would have something related to my first idea of a clean landscape with a blue sky with white clouds and green grass. I decided that Heliot will have the job of carrying boxes from one floating island to another and that this will make him very bored and frustated.

251 - New Speaker.

So due to the sound being louder than expected, my little speaker will not be able to handle what I am trying to do. Due to this, I grabbed an old speaker in my house that is amplified and does much better and I decided to use it instead.

241 - Project 2a - Narrowing Down Sketches

After a few more sketches, I narrowed down by idea. I decided to have an object with the Material/Shape of a helicopter, the Movement of a sailing boat and the meaning of Binoculars. With his binoculars he would be able to see very far away. He would be ran by fuel.

251 - Switch Working!

So the in presentation, even though I had a video to show it working, it was a bit frustrating not being able to show it real life. That only happened because I hadn't figured out which specific parts of my switch needed to be connected to specific parts of the Wah pedal. I went through pictures that I had of it before and I managed to figure out how it works. I took another close up picture of it so I know what to do if anything else goes wrong (breaks, detaches, etc.). You might not understand what is going on there but fortunately enough, I do.

241 - Project 2a - More Sketches

After talking to Szilard I found that my idea was too literal and that I needed to abstract more by objects and they way I incorporated them into my character. So I started drawing new sketches and tossed around the idea of having a helicopter with sailing wings and keeping the binoculars eyes. This time I thought I could have him as a spy. I thought I'd keep the cute aspect of the character.

251 - Working Circuit!!!!

So I was doing some more tests at home and by playing around with my circuit I managed to finally get it working! I found out that the problem was in the actual wah pedal (in the switch) rather than anywhere else. Took me ages since I was pretty sure that the problem was actually in the input/output. The way I managed to fix it was by using a clip and trying to connect different parts of the Wah's switch. The problem is that I don't know which parts were actually connected, but just that fact that now I know the circuit works gives me a relief. And since I was able to play music through the Pedal I decided that maybe I might add an extra option for you to 'Wah' your own music as well.

241 - Project 2 - Sketches

So here are my very first sketches for project 2A. I wanted to have a cute looking bird that had binocular eyes that could see very far. I thought of mixing the objects sailing boat, binoculars and landscape. He would travel alone and be kinda of sad due to not having any company. He would always see a distant land in the horizon with his binoculars but never be able to reach it.

241 - Final Video

Here is my final video :)

251 - Home Test

So I did some tests at home and instead of using the guitar tuner's speaker as the output I tried using my guitar amp. The tuner's sound never came through, however, something unexpected happened. Through what happened I was able to identify that the pedal was indeed working and that the problem was probably somewhere else.

241 - First Render.

So here is the first render that I did of my animation, however, it looks pretty shieeet... A few ugly looking textures that werent supposed to come out like that like the petals and the body having some problems with the scattering. The background also didnt help. So due to not being happy with it I decided to rerender and make it much better. Still worth having a look though, even though the final one is way better this one is still pretty interesting.

241 - The Sad Long-Stressful-Time-Consuming Life of Rendering Frames...

Ok...

So I feel like maybe I should have done something maybe simpler. Too late to turn back now, however, I did have to render with a lot of computers... My frames were taking way too long but I figured out a little system for myself to render only a few frames per computer. But of course.. all manual... Here are all the papers with my frame notes that I used to get myself organised.. It worked well but was really confusing in some occasions.

 

241 - Model's Context

So to put my animation into its final developed context, Ill be relating it to real living organisms.

Anemones:

Anemones are living fossil organisms that differently than mine, are usually stuck to rocks.

My anemone, just like the existing ones, lives out of light, it sucks light out of anything around it and uses it as its aliment/energy. It starts off on its early stage in a blobby form trying to find a good spot with good light sources for it to grow. Once the spot is found, it settles in the very middle of it and starts to grow. When finally on its tallest form, it is ready to flower.. Its petals finally open exposing its claws. The claws purpose are also to suck light. This creature is such an extreme form of an anemone when it reaches its final stage that its sucking-light force manages to creates sea bubbles that are completely filled with light. The claws will hold the light bubble and the petals will close for full extraction of light. Once the extraction is complete, it will open again and the bubble will go back to the sea surface with no light (transparent). The process of extracting so much light will cause the plants textures and colours to change.

251 - Resistors

So even though my LED is now working and it makes me happy, my circuit still doesn't come up with any sound. Ben's guess was that the current going through the Wah pedal was too high for it to work since guitars usually have a much smaller current. So I tried using several resistors to lower the current but it still didn't work, now I have now idea what's going on.

 

251 - Video Documentation

251 - LED working again

So I couldn't resist and did some more work on it. I figure out why LED wasn't working anymore. It was because I detached the 9v wall battery plug off the circuit since I'm not using it, I'm using an actual battery instead. But turns out the circuit needs that so I guess I'll just leave it there, doesn't bother me.